Taco Tray

While out shopping one evening we noticed something called a Taco Serving Tray. They were being sold for $10 and we seriously considered buying one. Our taco nights involve many toppings and we marveled at how convenient it would be to have them all on one tray. We didn't end up buying one, but when I got home I looked around to see if we had something that would do the same thing. Turns out we did!

A regular party tray works just perfectly. There is room for all the taco fixings and now we only have one topping dish at clean up. And dressing your taco is as easy as saying: "can you pass me the tray?"

Easily Filled Tacos

Lemon on Lemon

I recently purchased some lemon extract for fudge I'm making later this summer. I have a 100ml bottle (about 7 tbs), which doesn't sound like a lot, but the fudge recipe only needs 1 tsp (about 5ml). I had been wondering what to do with the other 95ml, and while grocery shopping last week I bought some ingredients so I could make lemon poppy seed cupcakes. I didn't have a recipe, but I figured I could throw one together with the lemon extract, a white cake mix, and some poppy seeds. Without a recipe though, I didn't know how many poppy seeds I'd need, so I bought two bags. Turns out you only need 2 tbs to make lemon poppy seed cupcakes, so I guess I have a lifetime supply.

I really want to make the most of this lemon extract, so I decided to top the cupcakes with lemon buttercream frosting. Lemon on lemon. We love lemon in this house, so the more the merrier.

In recent weeks I have set myself a rule that I'm only allowed to make treats when going to an event. The rule results in two awesome things: first, I get to share yummy baked goods with people I love. Second, I don't just eat 24 cupcakes all by myself. It's a good rule, but I have to say I broke it this week so I could try these cupcakes. Lemon sounds like a health food, so these cupcakes must be super healthy. I mean, it's not chocolate right??  Perhaps eating four of these in a row is actually good for me. Let's go with that... (please don't correct me if I'm wrong).

Easy Lemon Poppy Seed Cupcakes

• 1 box white cake mix (+ 3 eggs, 2tbs veg oil, 1 1/3 cup water)
• 1 tbs lemon extract
• 2 1/2 tbs poppy seeds
• Yellow gel food colouring

Combine cake mix, eggs, oil, water, lemon extract, and poppy seeds with electric mixer until blended (30 seconds). Add yellow food colouring. Mix at high speed for 2 minutes. Pour into paper lined muffin tins and bake at 350°F for 22 minutes.

Lemon Buttercream Frosting

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 cups icing sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp lemon extract
• Yellow gel food colouring

Cream butter with electric mixer. Add icing sugar in 1/2 cup intervals, mixing well after each addition. Add lemon extract and food colouring and continue mixing until light and fluffy. Add additional lemon extract to taste (John suggests I add 2 tsp next time and I agree. We like lemon!) 

Surfing Saturday: 06/08/2013

 
Surfing Saturday: a weekly round up of some of my favourite links on the interwebs.

Astronomy

Turns out there are a lot of astronauts on Twitter. Here is a giant list of current and former astronauts who tweet.
Want to know when the International Space Station is flying overhead? Provide your email to NASA - Spot The Station and they will email you on days when it is flying over your city.
A 15 year old girl wants to be the first astronaut on Mars. Read about her adventures and how she is educating other students at AstronautAbby.com
Wondering what the Mars Curiosity Rover is up to? Check out the website or find it on Twitter!
Ever wanted a picture of yourself from space? Consider pledging $25 to the ARKYD Space Telescope Kickstarter.

Game of Thrones

If you haven't seen the most recent episode of Game of Thrones, you can skip this section entirely as each of these links is going to contain massive spoilers! If you have seen it, check out these links about the Red Wedding.

io9 had the 100 Best Tweets about last night's Game of Thrones.
Gawker had 6 Minutes of People Losing Their Shit Over Last Night's Game of Thrones.
BuzzFeed had 25 Steps To Get Over Your Intense "Game of Thrones" Depression and The Best Tumblr Reactions to the Episode.
Maisie Williams, who plays Arya on the show, posted this fun Vine video.
HappyPlace always does pretty stellar If Game of Thrones Took Place Entirely on Facebook recaps. (Go back through and read them all if you haven't seen them - pretty funny stuff.)
Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin told Entertainment Weekly why he wrote that scene.

Easy Pesto Pasta

One of our favourite meals is Pesto Pasta. It is quick and easy to make, which makes it great for nights when we don't feel like cooking. It also tastes delicious, so we usually make heaps of it and eat it for days. This is one of the vegetarian meals we eat on our meal plan, and I just love it.

Key ingredients:
Rotini (we are currently working through a giant bag of tri-colour rotini that we got on super sale)
Basil Pesto (we get it in a jar...and we love it!)
Parmesan Cheese (we are shaker people except for special occasions)
Various vegetables (we like zuchinni and spinach)
Balsamic vinegar - optional (sometimes we add it, and sometimes we don't. We like to mix it up!)

The recipe is super simple. Boil pasta, saute vegetables, and mix everything together with Pesto and Parmesan cheese. So easy!

Sauteing spinach and zucchini

Add Parmesan and pesto to boiled pasta and stir

Mix in spinach and zucchini - I love how this meal looks!

I could eat this for days - and often I do! :)

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today...

Today is the 20th anniversary of the first time I saw Paul McCartney live in concert. The date was June 6, 1993, I was 12 years old, and I went with my friend Amanda all the way to Toronto to see it. It was the first real concert I had ever been too, and even though I have been to many amazing concerts since, none of them hold a place in my heart like McCartney's New World Tour. This concert happened at the perfect time to have a distinct impact of my musical life: it was my first stadium concert, I was young and impressionable, and it was fricken' Paul McCartney!

My Tour Book from The New World Tour Concert

I've been a Paul McCartney fan for as long as I can remember, but seeing him in concert turned me into a Mega Fan. We listened to the Beatles a lot growing up and I was already into some post-Beatles McCartney at the time of the show, but there was a lot of Wings and solo McCartney I had never heard. We had Wings Greatest and Paul McCartney: Unplugged, and I distinctly remember listening to my brother Tommy's Off The Ground tape as much as I could (which was easy to do because I loved it!), but it wasn't until after the show that I realized there was so much more to his discography.

The Off the Ground Songbook I made my parents get me

So much of the concert has become a blur to me, but there are some really vivid memories too.

The show opened with a ten minute video sequence which played on giant screens surrounding the stage. I remember nothing of the opening sequence except the last minute or so, which featured the Beatles song "The End". I didn't know the song at the time, but I remember the lyrics playing in my mind for days after, and having to sing them to my dad so he could tell me: "That's on Abbey Road". (Attn Kids: Google makes life so much easier now!) After the opening sequence finished, the band took the stage and began the show with "Drive My Car". I remember seeing the words "beep beep'm beep beep yeah!" dance across the video screen when Paul sang them. It was so fun and exciting and my first experience with anything like it.

Some Wings songs were new to me and my most vivid memory of a new (to me) song was "Let Me Roll It". The memory is so vivid because Paul performed it while on a platform that was raised and extended out over the audience. Paul McCartney doesn't hesitate to put on an exciting show, and to my 12 year old self, the novelty of him performing on a moving platform kinda blew my mind and made the song that much more memorable (plus it has a pretty great guitar riff!)

When Paul played "Biker Like an Icon", a dude a few rows ahead of us in his early twenties and wearing a Biker Like an Icon T-shirt, jumped into the air with pure glee. It was so cool to see so much enthusiasm from other fans.

For "Magical Mystery Tour" Paul called forth his "Magic piano" and I remember it moving on the stage towards him and being so colourful. At the time, it did seem rather magical.

Smoke exploded from the stage during the chorus of "Live and Let Die", followed by a pretty wicked light show. I recently found that I can relive this memory on Youtube, and have been doing so in recent days.

For the encore, Paul was joined onstage by the Peel Regional Police Pipe Band during a performance of "Mull of Kintyre". It was quite the spectacle, and there is audio of it on YouTube. Musicians often put out live albums, but I always find it surreal to hear the show I actually saw. If you follow the link and listen to it, some of the cheers you will be hearing are mine.

It has been said many times, but I will say it again: Paul McCartney puts on a great show. From start to finish he is full of energy and he can play for hours. I could have done much worse for who I chose to see for my first real concert.

The weeks, months, and years following the concert were a great time of musical discovery for me. I found out that Wings and solo McCartney both ruled, which wasn't necessarily the most popular musical choice in the mid-nineties, but I happily committed to it. The first tape I remember my mom helping me buy was Venus and Mars, which I played constantly until I knew every song by heart (I still do). Thus was my transition from fan into Mega fan.

These are all the Wings/McCartney tapes that I amassed after the concert and before CDs became a thing

So somehow it has been twenty years since that life changing concert and I am somehow twenty years older. I have since moved on to other types of music, have had other favourite bands, and have been to quite a few rocking concerts throughout the years. I even saw Paul again in 2003, and even though that concert was amazing, it isn't permanently etched into my psyche like the first show is. The 1993 concert was fun, exciting, rocking, rolling, and featured the perfect line up of McCartney's solo band. I'm shocked that it is twenty years later, but I am really happy that I carry such a great memory with me.